How Forrest Gump Helped Save My Life When I was Deployed To Iraq

Ben
King writes the thought-provoking blog Armor Down: "The
Army taught me how to up armor my mind and body for War. I
taught myself how to Armor Down to thrive as a civilian."
He served in the U.S. Army and is an Iraq war veteran.

The equivalent rule in Iraq was vehicle spacing throughout the
convoy. To understand why vehicle spacing was so important let me
tell you a bit about the IED that ripped through Voodoo 1143's
humvee on Dec 31,2006.

We got hit by what's called an explosively formed projectile or
EFP. An EFP is a concaved copper plate placed at the top of an
explosive charge. At ignition, the copper turns molten and the
blast sends the metal at the target at a rate of 8,000 meters per
second.

As you can see from these pictures, not only was 4.5 inches of
the best armor not enough – 8 inches, even 10 inches, wouldn't
have been enough. Look again at the image of the main
penetration: that piece of molten copper was aimed right at the
drivers door and had it been my time, I'd have been a goner.

The bad guys liked to daisy chain IEDs like this together. Their
goal was to kill as many of us as possible so they would place
the road side bombs in such a way as to take out multiple trucks
in one shot. This tactic was often followed by ambushes, sniper
attacks and other guerrilla tactics.

What LT Dan's rule to Gump was meant to do was give him a
fighting chance to survive.

Spacing out our Humvees during a mission followed the same
principle. Good spacing gave more of us a fighting chance to
survive an ambush, adjust, move on the objective and efficiently
remove said objective from this planet, HOOAH.

Now the second rule: don't do anything stupid like get yourself
killed makes a lot of sense in the context of war because the
simplest things like not taking care of your feet or not spacing
your vehicle could get you killed.

Driving to close to the vehicle ahead of you in a convoy was
stupid and if you did it, it could kill you. Simple. Easy rule to
follow. Stupid could equal death. Don't be stupid. Roger that.
Wilco. HOOAH.

I became a master over the 300 missions VooDoo 1143 went on over
the course of a year at keeping a good interval between our truck
and the one ahead.

What I noticed was that driving this way required the use of four
techniques: acceleration, coasting, deceleration and
coasting.

You see, I had to get good at keeping my spacing over and through
a wide variety of terrain so just slowing down and speeding up
wasn't enough. I became very sensitive to how far my acceleration
would take me and then coast based on the terrain to keep my
distance without having to slam on the brakes. This took
practice, but I mastered it.

Now I know it's only by the grace of the Divine that the EFP
didn't kill me, but I was coasting at the moment it hit. If I
hadn't been, well........

I follow this same pattern of driving as a civilian.

This is a vastly different style than how I used to drive and is
also vastly different from the way everyone around me
drives.

While most drivers in DC are pressing up the tail pipe of any
vehicle in front of them, I'm making space. While traffic on
beltway is bumper to bumper at any time day or night and frantic
drivers are constantly speeding up to slow down, I'm trying to
keep my spacing and find the rhythms of traffic that allow me to
handle a potentially volatile situation with ease.

Now, if I told a civilian that not keeping their spacing was
stupid and liable to get them killed, they'd look at me like I
had a phallus sticking out of my forehead.

Here it is again – I brought this up last week. When the imminent
threat of death is in your face all the time, a simple rule like
spacing is very significant; however, as a civilian (CLVN) the
threat doesn't seem so great. What does spacing matter as a CVLN?

And there it is my brothers and sisters at Arms, this weeks
training.

How you drive is an expression of what is going on inside
you.

So on your way back from your trip out of normal and into nature
to find your breath, watch how you drive and look at it in
relation to your breath.

Your inhale is the gas, your exhale is the break. But don't
forget the space in between!

Remember the breath is your first tool you look to in order to
make space between you and that edge. It is your first resource
for Armoring Down.

When you can settle and watch your breath, your situational
awareness will go up.

Settle your vehicle in the middle lane. Watch how the vehicles
around you race by in order to get where they are going one
minute faster than the next guy.

Watch your emotions. I friggen hated getting passed in the old
days. It was an affront to my manhood.

Now I chill. I find the flow and I get where I am going with
ease.

Doing something stupid in War could get you killed quick, as a
CVLN the same rule applies, the consequences are just slower to
form.

The 11th stanza of the Art of Peace, by founder and creator of
the Martial Art Aikido, Morihei Ueshiba is: